I welcome sequels, reboots, or other variants if they aren’t inimical to the source material. Putting a new spin on old material is how art evolves. (I Walked With a Zombie was the 10th and best screen version of Jane Eyre.) However, if you want to (say) make a version of Star Trek where Spock is a horndog, at least have enough respect for the creators of the original to change the names.
This week we watched the 1938 preboot of My Fair Lady called Pygmalion; it is a scene-for-scene nonmusical premake of the later original, with Leslie Howard doing a superior job in the Rex Harrison role. The delightful Wendy Hiller does no singing in the premake, but of course the same could be said for Audrey Hepburn in the original.
Including Casablanca on a “remake/reboot” list is kind of pushing it. Yes, the script was based on a play called Everybody Comes To Rick’s, but said play was never actually produced anywhere before the movie was made.
Actually I was thinking of the 1937 film Pépé le Moko which was an inspiration/basis for both the play and Casablanca (at least as much as ostensible source materials are for many remakes). Some of the story elements for Everybody Comes to Rick’s came from the experiences of the writers of the play, but much of the rest came directly from Pépé le Moko and its English language shot-for-shot remake (in '38), Algiers. That remake starred Hedy Lamarr, and was also a direct inspiration for the Casablanca movie as well, to the point where Casablanca had even been written specifically for Lamarr as the female lead (but MGM blocked her from appearing in it).
Surely the original is called Educating Rita. No, wait, Trading Places. Er, Pretty Woman? No, Mighty Aphrodite. Or maybe She’s All That. Wait, definitely Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen.Ruby Sparks? … No, wait, it all started with that movie with the script by Emma Thompson, with John Madden directing and starring Colin Firth and Carey Mulligan. Yep, that’s the one.
I kind of appreciate the bullshit ‘artistry’ in The Matrix Regurgitations - copying scenes from a better movie or fuck it, let’s just RESHOW the scene from the first movie why not? If we can get morons to pay for it, that’s all that matters. God what a shitshow, but hey, it made WB another few hundred million!
